johnnyweekes70

Forbidden Planet?

For me, The Great Lie, with Bette Davis and George Brent was a huge let-down. I've read a lot about that picture being great but, really, The Golden Arrow is superior. I usually like the Davis/Brent team but I just didn't buy it. Mary Astor was okay, but if you really want to watch a better film by Edmund Goulding, watch Nightmare Alley. Maybe The Great Lie seemed better in 1941.

I wonder why TCM hasn't aired Winner Take All, Hard to Handle, Frisco Kid, or Ceiling Zero in at least three years that I know. They must just get lost in the shuffle.

Picture Snatcher is my favourtie. I've been a Cagney fan for over twenty years and thank goodness TCM is around to allow people to see stuff like Picture Snatcher, The Mayor of Hell, Taxi!, and even The St. Louis Kid. There's so much to Cagney's screen prescence beyond Public Enemy, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Angels with Dirty Faces. Another favourite is Torrid Zone. What a hilarious film. Cagney is one of the greats, and deserves his due on DVD, though I understand Warners is preparing a Cagney set. If it could only contain everything he did at Warners (though he might not have agreed), I'd certainly be happy. His early work was fast, snappy, mostly ridiculous and certainly not PC. When he died, I was watching The Ten Commandents and the hourly update mentioned his passing. Too bad his last work was Terrible Joe Moran. He should have left it at Ragtime and went out in style. The thing I like most about Cagney is that his screen persona was the exact opposite of the man himself, even down to his eyeliner and darkened eyebrows. A quiet, gentle fellow who loved horses as much as his wife. Good men come few and far between and it's really quite interesting that Cagney is best remembered for being one of the screen's greatest creeps.

Ernst Lubitsch, I think.

Thanks for the clarification, tcmviewer, about Dressed to Kill. There's about as much need for a colorized version of the Holmes film as much as their release of My Man Godfrey (or any film, for that matter). A shame. I don't really have any hope of those classic crime films being released either but it never hurts to express the desire to see a commerical release. Cheers.

It's maybe of note that Fox is releasing the third Michael Shayne film, Dressed to Kill, in September. Though it's odd that Fox jumped to entry No. 3 for an initial DVD release, none of those films have ever been available before and it's at least a glimmer of hope that more like it will follow.

Sorry, are the construction division.... Where was my brain?

The Seabees were the construction division of the U.S. Naval forces.

belinoitaliano, Do you ever do an image search for the Italian beauties of your favour? I've seen a lot of what I consider nice quality pics of Loren, Cardinale, etc. on various sites so they're out there if you've got the time to search.

I had no idea The Complete Thin Man Collection was No. 1 on amazon.com. That's extraordinary, but fitting for the quality of those films above current drek and very telling about the demand for such product. I noticed The High and the Mighty was No. 3. Hopefully, it's a sign of things to come. With a slew of Paramount titles like We're No Angels, The Mircale of Morgan's Creek and Detective Story coming out, Universal and Sony really have to get their act together. I am impressed, however, that Sony is putting out a vintage Karloff film, The Man with Nine Lives, for Hallowe'en, but I'd be more impressed if it utilized the space better and was a double-feature disc. I'm not complaining, but I am...

Absolutely, lzcutter. Feltenstein is an angel of mercy and one can only hope more like him come along to decide what makes it onto our home video libraries.

gyspybangles, I agree with your sentiment that these films appeal, or will appeal, to a relatively small audience but I have successfully turned two kids, a 12-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, both relatively advanced for their ages but products of our media-crazed present, onto old-films via dumb Bob Hope comedies, Errol Flynn dramas and a bunch of diverse films like Stalag 17, Isle of the Dead, and even Torrent with Garbo (courtesy TCM), which Anna adored. I really believe companies like Sony and Universal underestimate the potential for their archive material. There is a market for this stuff. The Dick Tracy series and Mr. Wong series, long in public domain, have been successfully issued, and if a company like Kino can convince people to buy obscure silent stuff like Othello and The Loves of Jeanne Ney, and Warners can excel at putting out anything they feel like, I don't know why Boston **** or the Lone Wolf or even Henry Aldrich never made it to video when countless B movies continually hit the market and are forgotten in a year or less. If there's a market for The A-Team and Wanted: Dead or Alive, there's a market for these vintage crime films. It's reasonable to assume this stuff will be forgotten if it's not available and, if there's a market for The A-Team and Wanted: Dead or Alive, there's a market for these vintage crime films. I don't think the issue revolves around money; the cost of DVD production is, really, minimal when you consider what's out there. Something else is afoot. Even the films Cary Grant made for Paramount, owned by Universal, with minor exceptions, have never been available; it's logical to think that because almost all of Grant's later work was available on VHS and most of it's on on DVD Universal would put that stuff out, but they don't. I could cite numerous examples, but it's all very perplexing to me.

The Boston **** films were released, unfortunately, by Columbia, and we know how hard it is to see their most of their '30s and '40s stuff. Along with the Lone Wolf series, maybe one days Sony will put this stuff out.

None of those fellows were Warner Brothers contract players, I think. And do you mean Stepin Fetchit?

Another good place to find out about upcoming DVD releases is DVD Times (dvdtimes.co.uk). They post all the major labels' upcoming stuff for Region 1 and Region 2. It was there I just found out about Lifeboat, the Bogart We're No Angels, Casanova's Big Night, Red Garters and other soon-to-in-my-collection Paramounts. They also provide nice cover art to get you even more worked up about buying new releases.

I never forget about Carole Lombard, but I also think about Madge Evans from time to time.

What does 'classic' mean? When most people call a film 'classic' they're generally referring to something like Citizen Kane or Casablanca. They're not thinking about Havana Widows or Sins of the Children. Most of the films TCM plays aren't classics but are called such because of their age. I think a good film is a good film regardless of when it was made, whether it's in colour or black-and-white, whether it has sound or doesn't, and even bad films can be good films if viewed in the right light. I don't see Moonstruck as being a classic as much I think Greed is but maybe it's just the name Turner Classic Movies that inspires one to think all their programming should consist of vintage titles when it's actually refreshing to see an obscure silent film directly after a modern film. It appears TCM sees little difference between 'classic' films and recent-to-contemporary films. In our visually-hyperactive, consumer-driven society, at least there's the option of TCM (that is, if you live in America) to remind us violent, sexual oriented, special effects-laden drek was not always what filmmaking was about. It's just the 'classic' bit that's confusing.

Allen Jenkins is definitely a candidate for me. His little scene in Blessed Event is priceless, as is much of his Warners work. There really were so many that made those films so great. It's hard to name a favourtie, but Jenkins would certainly be top of the list.

I get it. I'm sent to an older posting following posting my present posting. Geez, sometimes computers really get my goat.

Don't know why that answer was posted here. I can't even find where it was supposed to go!

Doctor X.

Timothy Bottoms in Bogdonovich's The Last Picture Show.

Gene Autrey

Ace in the Hole has long been a hole in anybody's Billy Wilder collection and Detective Story has long been in a hole in anybody's William Wyler collection and they've both been holes in anybody's Kirk Douglas collection. Super news that they'll be filled. To see The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in a non-PD print, and a pre-1949 Paramount actually released by Paramount Home Video, will be something else. Great news for collectors.